The Philosopher Kandiaronk
Price € 795,- ($ 895,-)
Kandiaronk, a leader of the Wendat people in North America, was an intellectual whose ideas made their way to Europe in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
These ideas gave rise to the Enlightenment.
French Jesuits in the area around Montreal (known then as New France) had a series of lively intellectual and philosophical discussions with Kandiaronk, a leader of the Wendat people.
Kandiaronk’s Influence on the Enlightenment begins with a discussion of the relationship between the indigenous tribes and European colonists in North America.
These interactions informed the European view of indigenous societies in general and ultimately came to influence European culture itself. This is because European Enlightenment philosophy was inspired by the native North American people’s critique of European customs.
In these conversations, Kandiaronk raised scathing critiques of European social customs and values, particularly criticizing monarchical rule, social hierarchies, emphasis on the accumulation of wealth and materialism, and punitive justice systems.
Several Enlightenment thinkers explicitly stated that they were drawing on these indigenous American ideas but that attribution was either lost or purposefully discarded over time, and the ideas became associated entirely with the European scholars.
